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This is a nasal ranger, and that thing he's using is an "olfactometer", a portable device that helps you smell. But not how you'd think. It actually dilutes the surrounding air by seven times, and if you can still smell whatever's making the air stinky, that's considered "excessive".

Iowa has trained 34 of these guys to test the air quality around farms and such.

Leah Wednesday Oct 29 04:30 PM

WOW, this is the first time I've been first to comment.

All I can say is "why"?

tjennings Wednesday Oct 29 05:34 PM

Stand downwind of an Iowa pig farm and ask why. I live in Iowa and would be happy to wear that most days.

Leah Wednesday Oct 29 05:45 PM

Oh I see. Can't say that I've ever been to a pig farm or smelt one 4 that case, but I believe you.

SteveDallas Wednesday Oct 29 06:33 PM

I must be missing something. Some kind of industrial waste, I can understand. What are farmers who are in violation supposed to do? make their livestock shit less?

breakingnews Wednesday Oct 29 07:52 PM

I wonder if that thing could be converted into some sort of vaporizer for smoking pot ... that'd be super duper dank.

xoxoxoBruce Wednesday Oct 29 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SteveDallas I must be missing something. Some kind of industrial waste, I can understand. What are farmers who are in violation supposed to do? make their livestock shit less?

Naw, but they can dispose of/neutralize it quicker. Most of the pig farm stench is from accumulation. Keeping the smell down is very time consuming and labor intensive or if you choose high tech solutions, expensive.Mojo The Monkey Wednesday Oct 29 08:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SteveDallas I must be missing something. Some kind of industrial waste, I can understand. What are farmers who are in violation supposed to do? make their livestock shit less?

You're imagining Farmer Brown with a wooden barn and maybe a dozen or so hogs.

Modern feedlots aren't anything like you're imagining. Imagine over 10 thousand hogs or up to two million chickens in a single location.

Here's a photo of the inside of a feedlot. Notice how densely packed the animals are?

Here's an aerial photo of a feedlot.

Each and every one of those buildings are filled just as densely as in the previous photo with hogs. And the brown "lake" across the road? Well, let's just say it's not water in that lake. Pig manure is liquid. And it stinks. A lot. People living downwind from some of these giant factory farms are concerned about the health effects. The air and soil in these areas are contaminated with excess ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and high levels of e. coli bacteria.

Maybe these factory farmers can't make their livestock shit less, but they can choose not to pack them in so densely. Or they could choose to treat the manure, using the same techniques used to treat human sewage. But they don't because that will cut in to their profits, and we all know that profitability is more important than human health or environmental safety.

There might be another solution, Mojo. These guys in Philly that came up with the process to make oil from any carbon based crap (pun) might be the solution. They're building a unit right next to the Tyson processing plant to turn the feathers, bones and crap into oil for heat and hot water for the plant. Warren Buffet has put up a couple million to make this happen.
When I first read about this (here in the Cellar) I thought the oil companies would jump on it but now I think waste disposal will drive the industry and the oil will just make it economically viable.
The bad news is to make this an option they would probably have to combine feed lots into even bigger facilities.

bjlhct Thursday Oct 30 12:42 AM

It's called thermal depolymerization, and the Deltapark people are probably all over it too. Waste disposal, sure. Feedlots are already big enough though.

However, if you think about it, it starts seeming silly. I mean, should we collect the methane from cow farts and burn it for fuel? On the other hand, lots of things that work today seem silly.

Elspode Thursday Oct 30 01:06 AM

I gotta ask...they dilute the surrounding air seven times...with *what*?

I did not note an air tank or anything on this device, so how is the ambient air diluted?

Elspode Thursday Oct 30 01:11 AM

I love the Internet. Here's a link to the operating manual for the device...

It filters one stream of air, making it odor-particle free, and then mixes the ambient air in a configurable ratio before passing it to the detector device (i.e., the human nose).

xoxoxoBruce Thursday Oct 30 05:06 AM

My buddy lives in southern Lancaster county near the Buck. Giving directions to his house from here it's "Cross the Octararo and make a left at the pig farm." "How will I know which is the pig farm?" "Oh, you'll know!!"

Scopulus Argentarius Thursday Oct 30 07:38 AM

Concerning the 3 man design team of the Nasal Ranger...

One man felt, he felt smart
two men felt, they felt smart
three me felt, they all felt smart

....

mlandman Thursday Oct 30 12:12 PM

Quote:

However, if you think about it, it starts seeming silly. I mean, should we collect the methane from cow farts and burn it for fuel? On the other hand, lots of things that work today seem silly.

Dude, you have NEVER seen Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome (or whatever it was called).

-mikeMojo The Monkey Thursday Oct 30 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bjlhct What do you think about DeltaPark then Mojo?

Sounds like a fantasy to me. The profit margins in agriculture are way too thin to support such a capital-intensive operation, at least for the forseeable future.bjlhct Thursday Oct 30 10:27 PM

Well, right, subsidies would be required.

xoxoxoBruce Thursday Oct 30 10:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bjlhct However, if you think about it, it starts seeming silly. I mean, should we collect the methane from cow farts and burn it for fuel? On the other hand, lots of things that work today seem silly.

I don't think the purpose is energy recovery to cut costs but waste disposal. They are up to their butts in poop. In Holland it's so bad the canal and ground water is contaminated. They're drying the crap and exporting it to Africa as fertilizer.bjlhct Friday Oct 31 12:05 AM

Right, it's a good idea, it just seems weird. Weird is OK though.

Actually, cow crap may be worse due to all the new antibiotic resistant diseases starting out in those packed open cow feedlots.